Left: Judge Kevin Christensen (Utah State Courts). Right: Ned Brady Hansen (Tremonton City).
A Utah judge was put on unpaid leave after police accused him of committing several sex crimes involving children. The next day, a former fire chief from the same locality was charged with similar crimes. But court documents revealed an even deeper connection between the two men.
According to court documents obtained by KSL, a local NBC affiliate, Ned Brady Hansen, 54, was charged on Tuesday with eight counts of aggravated sexual exploitation of a minor. When Hansen was first arrested on Jan. 27 — when he was still Tremonton’s fire chief — investigators working his case asked a judge to hold him in custody without bail due to the nature of his alleged crimes.
That judge, Kevin Christensen, 64, let Hansen go free.
On Monday, Christensen was charged with seven felony sex crimes involving children and obstructing justice. And according to an affidavit for Hansen’s arrest, the two men had been engaged in a “sexual relationship,” KSL reported.
Both men were investigated by police for alleged interactions on a chat app called Kik. Hansen came to the attention of investigators in November 2024 when the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children was alerted to Kik being used to distribute child sex abuse material. Investigators eventually allegedly connected one user account on the app to Hansen, who reportedly admitted to being the account user and possessing materials featuring children.
A subsequent FBI investigation into Hansen reportedly revealed the connection to Christensen. According to a search warrant filed by FBI agents, Hansen was allegedly sharing child sex abuse material (CSAM) with other online users — including the judge, local Fox affiliate KUTV reported. That investigation also reportedly revealed that law enforcement had initially asked Christensen to keep Hansen in custody following his January arrest, and that at the time the judge did not disclose that he had engaged in sexually-charged chats with Hansen. This, investigators reportedly say, materially affected Christensen’s choice to release Hansen.
The investigation into Hansen also yielded “an extensive number of chats” between him and Christensen in which they both expressed their desires to sexually abuse children. Those conversations were described as “graphically sexual” in the affidavit. Court documents stated that Hansen allegedly told Christensen about children he knew that he wanted to abuse and that he would “share” the children with him.
Hansen’s charges involve the alleged dissemination of child sex abuse material, and he reportedly admitted to investigators that he “had a pornography addiction.” He allegedly said in one chat that “he ‘totally would’ molest a child ‘if (he) could get away with it.””
Christensen’s alleged offenses were in connection to apparent interactions with minors, or at least users who said they were minors. He allegedly sent explicit photos of himself and carried on “graphic sexual chats” with users that he believed were teenage girls. The probable cause affidavit for Christensen’s arrest also stated that the judge made “multiple references” to abusing “relative children,” and that another investigation had begun into those claims.
Hansen was fired from his position as chief of the Tremonton Fire Department after his arrest in January. Christensen was placed on unpaid leave. Both are currently in custody and are being held without bail.
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